Kinshasa, August 26th, 2025 (CPA).- The ‘First 1,000 Days of Life for a Good Start for Infants’ campaign, which aims to promote adequate growth, has been launched during a ceremony on Tuesday in Kinshasa, the democratic capital of the Congo (DRC), by the Ministry in charge of Public Health in partnership with the World Food Programme (WFP).
‘These thousand days, from conception to the child’s second birthday, are a unique window of opportunity to ensure their survival and promote their optimal development and fulfil their full potential,’ has declared Ollo Sib, Deputy Director of the World Food Programme (WFP) in DRC. ‘DRC is experiencing an unprecedented nutritional crisis. One in four Congolese people suffer from food insecurity, and in some areas, families have only one meal a day. Only 10% of children have a minimally acceptable diet, nearly one in two children suffer from stunted growth and 8.2% are emaciated,’ he has added. These figures, he has stressed, are not statistics, but rather the face of a nutritional emergency that calls for immediate and collective action. « The consequences are alarming in terms of numbers: 4.5 million children under the age of 5 are suffering from acute malnutrition or are at risk, including 1.4 million in immediate danger. 3.7 million pregnant or breastfeeding women are also affected, » has noted the WFP Deputy Director. According to him, this crisis is the result of interrelated factors, including conflicts and population displacement disrupting agriculture and markets; poverty limiting access to nutritious food; climate shocks reducing harvests; and inadequate healthcare.
A period of rapid physiological change
For Ms. Beatrice Kalenga, Deputy Director of the National Nutrition Programme (Pronanut), the first 1,000 days are identified as a period of rapid physiological change. « The exposure to dietary, environmental, hormonal and other stressors during this period is associated with an increased risk of health problems. Interventions carried out during the first 1,000 days will target the adult population, » she has said. For his part, Desire Matampi, SG Representative for Public Health, has explained that the problem of malnutrition, which particularly affects children under the age of 5, is trans generational and a cause for concern for the government. For more than three decades, several interventions have been carried out in DRC, but despite this, a recurrence of malnutrition in all its forms has been observed. It is with this in mind that this campaign has been launched to confirm the country’s commitment to giving every child a good start in life, thanks to the support and involvement of stakeholders. The awareness campaign on the importance of ‘1000 first days of life for a good start’ is being launched as part of World Breastfeeding Week. CPA/Genevieve